My Friend Lenny by John Grochowski

Somewhere buried deep in my files of personal memorabilia is a letter from Lenny Frome. It was written in 1994, it was the first contact I had from the first video poker guru, the man who made playable strategies accessible to the public.

Lenny had written a column in th e Las Vegas publication Gaming Today lamenting the lack of information available to the general public on how to attack casino games. Casinos were spreading out across the nation. New players who’d never read a gaming-oriented magazine or a book on the games were beginning to test their luck. Why weren’t mainstream, general interest publications showing them how to get the most for their money?

As it happened, I’d just started writing a weekly column for the Chicago Sun-Times a few months before. I dropped some samples in the post, along with a letter telling Lenny I was a fan. It wasn’t long before his response arrived, telling me how pleased he was to see such a thing in a mainstream newspaper, and inviting me to visit him the next time I was in Las Vegas.

From that grew a friendship, which wasn’t hard to do with Lenny. He was a friend to all players. Even his e-mail address was “PlayersPal.” He wanted players to learn to play video poker well, he wanted them to make money, and he wanted to help.

Help he did. Starting with a four-page tipsheet called “50+ Tips on Video Poker,” Lenny Frome taught us how to play. A retired aerospace engineer, he had the mathematical chops to calculate the best ways to attack video poker games, and then convert them into playable strategy tables.

He followed up with full-length books, including “Winning Strategies for Video Poker” and “Video Poker: America’s National Game of Chance.” “Winning Strategies” is just what it says, strategy tables for video poker in all its variations on a theme of the time, including — would you believe? — 14 versions of Deuces Wild. “America’s National Game of Chance” is much more than a strategy book, with quizzes and stories. It’s a book I reach for every few years, just to remind myself of a few old favorites from my friend. His take on Deuces Wild, in which the full-pay version gives an edge to players in the know, is revealing of both his pro-player lean and his exasperation with being unable to get the message out to the majority of average players. “Deuces Wild is a game that everyone ought to like,” he wrote. “But this writer has a bit of a grudge against the game. Well, not so much against the game itself, because my wife is a wiz at Deuces Wild, but against the feeling of unfulfillment it created for me.”

Lenny had done the first analysis showing players had an edge on full-pay Deuces, a paytable commonly available in Nevada at the time. He told a friend in the gaming and media business, who was certain TV networks would want to spread the word. They didn’t. Few people outside the world of video poker regulars paid any attention at all. His feeling of unfulfillment came from being unable to get the word out that would help his fellow players fill their casino visits with fun and profit.

I paid attention. I bought his books and learned his strategies. I already was a fan of his work when he wrote that Gaming Today column. From there, he became my friend and mentor, giving advice, and writing a forward for my first book, Gaming.

An evening with Lenny became a ritual during the few years until Lenny’s death in 1998. One evening of every visit to Las Vegas was reserved for a visit with the Fromes, Lenny and his wife Rhoda. They were exceptionally kind, fun to be around, and never allowed me to pick up a dinner check.

If my wife Marcy was with me on the trip, so much the better. The four of us would dine out — memorable nights at the All-American Bar and Grille at the Rio and Hugo’s Cellar at the Four Queens come to mind. After dinner, Lenny would tell Marcy and Rhoda, “You play for a while. I have to show John something.” And we’d head off for a tour of games in the casino.

Sometimes it would be a new wrinkle in video poker. One time, Lenny wanted to show me All-American Poker, which we didn’t have in the Midwest. It was a quirky game that paid the same 8-for-1 on straights, flushes and full houses. We whiled away the time talking strategy while watching others play.

Sometimes it would be off to the tables instead of the machines, for Lenny analyzed table games, too. For every table game you see in casinos, a mathematical analysis had to be submitted to the state gaming board. Regulators have to know every detail of a game before it is licensed for play. Lenny was one of the go-to guys when it came time for game developers to have their creations analyzed.

He analyzed table games for players, too, turning out strategy booklets on Caribbean Stud Poker, Let It Ride and Spanish 21. Sometimes, another analyst would follow a few months later with a more complex strategy that cut the house edge a little bit more. But as the players’ pal, Lenny was trying bring us the best of both worlds, strategies that would cut the house edge as low as it could go while remaining playable, something an average player could learn quickly and play accurately.

Lenny was quick to recognize a game’s potential. One time he told me, “I want you to meet Derek Webb. He has a good game and it deserves to be played. See what you can do for him. It failed a trial at the Stardust, but I think that was more the Stardust than the game.”

The game was Three Card Poker, which later found a footing in Mississippi, then spread across the nation and today, is pretty much a casino standard.

While Lenny and I explored the games, Marcy and Rhoda would usually sit at the video poker bar, playing a little, and catching up. We loved our evenings with the Fromes, always a Las Vegas highlight. And after the Fromes left, we’d sometimes apply a few lessons on video poker.

We were staying at the Rio on an evening when we joined the Fromes at the All-American Grill. Marcy and Rhoda had been playing Jacks or Better, but Rhoda had mentioned that she really liked Deuces Wild. Once the Fromes had gone, Marcy said she’d just never really felt comfortable with Deuces Wild, so I suggested we sit down at a couple of nickel machines for a cheap lesson.

She was dealt a hand with two deuces, and the three of a kind line lit up on the paytable. She asked what Lenny said. I told her to hold just the 2s, that she’d have at least three of a kind, and a three-card draw put her in the best position for more. Marcy hit the draw button, and up popped the other two 2s. A thousand nickels came pouring into the tray.

It was a story that got a big laugh from Lenny the next time we talked. When someone else was winning at his beloved game, well, the players’ pal was happy.

-— John Grochowski is the author of The Casino Answer Book, The Slot Machine Answer Book, The Video Poker Answer Book and the Craps Answer Book, available online at: www.casinoanswerman.com.